In my prior patents, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,670,942, entitled "Aerator" and issued Mar. 2, 1954, I described a faucet attachment for producing either a coherent jet of aerated water or a spray. In the following three of my U.S. patents, the operator may select either a bubbly stream or a bubble-free jet: U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,824 entitled "Spray-Producing Device In Which The Outputs Are Aerated", issued Jan. 11, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,811,619 entitled "Spray-Producing Device", issued May 21, 1974; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,026 entitled "Spray-Producing Device", issued Aug. 13, 1974. However, each of these devices is effective over a limited range of water pressures. In particular, the devices are only effective in high or normal water pressure situations or in low water pressure situations but one device is effective in both types of situations.
The object of the present invention is to provide an improved showerhead effective in a wide range of water pressures, in which the operator may select the type of stream from a variety of streams which is best for his/her purpose.
The present invention is a showerhead selectively operable to produce a variety of output streams, enabling the user to select one set of streams having a relatively large diameter, rich in bubbles, when the water pressure is high, or a second set of streams of a smaller diameter, full of bubbles, when the water pressure is low. Furthermore, the user may select a showerhead output of a spray instead of the bubbly stream, or reduce the number of bubbly or bubble-free jets, thereby forming other sets of stream outputs.